"What it comes down to is a similar issue that got Dell into this mess in the first place. As the price of the average computer system they sell drops, Dell is less able to profit from that sale. One reason is due to shipping- as prices slip the percentage of the total purchase that shipping takes up rises. This means that Dell’s lack of retail outlets, once a strength, is now a major weakness. The same goes for the operating system because as the price of the total computer drops, the software becomes relatively more expensive. A side point to this is that the company already operates on slim margins (and with tough price competition) so the inability to profit from the operating system will also hurt. If this was all not enough, the addition of Linux could be even more of a problem because it would present an option besides Vista, something that many people once saw as being a major boon to computer manufacturers because of all the systems that would have to be upgraded to run it"...that sounds right to me...